


How Will I Know

by runnoft



Series: Strange You Never Knew [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 11:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7799350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runnoft/pseuds/runnoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She chances a look at Jonathan who’s still watching her from the bottom of the stairs. She sees his face harden minutely, but then he’s smiling at her genuinely and openly, and in that moment she knows that she’s lost him for good and things will never go back to the way they were. It wasn’t that she chose her commitment to Steve over their friendship, which if she were really being honest with herself, hadn’t been the real reason she’d actually kept Jonathan at arm’s length. It was that she had lied. For months. She had betrayed his already precarious trust in others and she hates herself for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Will I Know

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: So, I had debated posting this with the lyrics, and when I did it just wasn't doing it for me, so I've only inserted a few choice lines. This series was inspired by a collection of songs that I've decided to use to track Nancy and Jonathan's relationship. Again, bear with me since this is my first time posting any fic in nearly seven years and there are so many talented people posting Nancy/Jonathan fics already. I promise I'm not normally this insecure.

May 12th, 1985

***

“So, did he call?” Barb urges excitedly as she saddles up beside Nancy in the hall.

“Keep your voice _down,”_ She groused, but couldn’t quite keep herself from grinning at the question.

“ _Did_ he?”

“I told you, it’s not like that.”

Barb rolls her eyes.

“Okay, I mean, _yes._ He likes me, but not like that.” She says opening her locker. She finds a folded up piece of lined notebook paper stuck between her copy of _Ulysses_ and her favorite bottle of perfume. Barb spots it too, Nancy sees her brows rise beyond the frame of her glasses and she leans against the neighboring locker with a smug smile as Nancy unfolds it.

_WHAT’S THE WEIRDEST PART? ME OR THE BEAR TRAP?_

She’s plummeted into darkness then, the note still clutched tightly in her hands, and it takes her a minute to notice snow falling softly around her, her breath visibly leaves her in quick plumes of steam and she realizes she’s in the Upside Down. She sees nothing beyond the trees and endless rolling fog, and somehow that’s even more frightening than when she quietly tried to evade a feasting monster.

_How will I know…_

She hears the faint and warbling music playing from somewhere in the fog and she moves towards it.

“Hello? Someone! Please!”

_Don’t trust your feelings…_

_How will I know…_

_Love can be deceiving…_

She can't get a bead on where the tinny sound is coming from but it seems to surround her. She runs her hands up into her hair and tugs, hoping she’ll jolt herself awake, a strategy that’s worked during previous nightmares, but doesn’t now. A visceral fear tears through her guts because  _this is real. Shit._

A beam of light suddenly cuts through the curtain of fog.

“Jonathan!”

“Nancy, I’m right here! Just follow my voice!” He shouts from somewhere beyond the void.

She bolts for him and runs for what feels like eons. Her calves are screaming, her lungs are burning and ready to burst inside her chest, and her face is wet from crying. She passes the same cluster of trees and rocks over and over again, and what if she can’t get to him? What if he can’t find her this time?

_Nancy!_

_Nancy!_

_Nancy!_

_Nancy!_

“Nancy?” Jonathan shakes her awake. He’s still in her bed lying above the covers in his dirty jeans and a tee shirt and she's very aware of him-all of him-in that second when she comes to. His palm is clammy and she can feel its dampness through the thin cotton sleeve of her nightgown where his hand is still resting on her shoulder. She hears him breathe audibly through his nose and if she looks closely enough she can see his pulse pounding through his chest and neck. His tongue darts out nervously to wet his lips and her gaze flickers to his mouth. She props herself up on her elbows but says nothing and they regard each other silently.

“I’m sorry,” He says, his lashes sweeping low when he casts his eyes down at the comforter, his fingers twisting around a loose thread. “You were crying, and I thought-”

In an instant she’s closed the gap between them and she’s kissing him with more desperation than she ever thought herself capable of. He hesitates, but when she cants her head to explore his mouth, his arms encircle her waist and he returns the kiss with a guttural moan. He rolls them over and her hands bunch roughly in his tee shirt, then move to slide down the exposed small of his back-

_There’s a boy I know, he’s the one I dream of!_

_Looks into my eyes, takes me to the clouds above!_

Nancy startles awake when Whitney Huston’s gleeful and full-throated voice blasts through the radio on her desk and in that moment, she truly believed it was possible to be cursed. This _song_ was a curse. She lowers her face back down onto her open chemistry book, deflated.

For two months her nightmares had given way to these mortifying dreams, and Whitney _fucking_ Huston always seemed to play a prominent roll in them. 

Their timing had been easy to pin point. It had been two months since her vibrato had echoed through Steve’s BMW when he’d offered Nancy a ride home from school one Friday afternoon. He turned into the cul-de-sac and had pulled the car to a stop tentatively, which was odd because tentative was not something that was in Steve's nature. He’d taken a breath and looked at her expectantly.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

“Nancy,” He said quietly, earnestly – again, not in his nature- and she was suddenly reminded of the moment she’d spent in Jonathan Byers’ living room, surrounded by dimming Christmas lights, her fingers curling around his instinctively after she’d dressed the matching wounds on both their palms as they lay in wait for a faceless monster. A brief second of normalcy in an otherwise unbelievable set of circumstances. She remembered her eyes coming to focus on his lips when he said her name. His mouth had begun to form around what she hoped was something akin to…well, she didn’t really know what, before Steve came crashing into the scene all sweet, and noble, and determined, and still bloodied from his fight with Jonathan earlier. Something that was very much in his nature. And she had drawn a gun on him in that same instant.

“Nancy, where’d you go?”

“Sorry, I was just…you know what, never mind.” She righted herself to face him as she unbuckled her seat belt. “What can I-”

“I love you,” He had said in a rush. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but somehow, this was in a different context entirely. “I love you, Nancy. And I know that college is going to change everything, and you’re probably going to take over the world or whatever, but I think what we have is special. It’s _worth_ something.” When he presented her with the small, lavender, faux-velvet box he had fumbled out of his hip pocket, her horror was evident in her face but he had been quick to assuage her.

“It’s not that!” He said frantically. “It’s not that, holy shit. No.”

“Jesus Christ,” She gasped, relived. “Steve Harrington, I think I just had an aneurysm!” She shoved him and he beamed at her.

“No, it’s not that.” He’d opened the box to reveal a small opal in a delicate, gold setting.

“But I thought maybe you could wear this. When you go, that is. This could be like…a promise ring. So when you _do_ come back,” He slid the band over her left ring finger. “You know I’ll be here. Waiting for you.”

Things between them were good and they were happy, happier than they had been even before Will Byers’ disappearance had taken over their lives. She’d pulled him in by the collar of his jean jacket for a long, soft kiss by way of a response.

She felt obligated to withdraw from Jonathan after she had accepted the ring, and if he noticed her distance he hadn’t said. But he’s observant, and something in Nancy breaks a little because she knows he’ll think he’s losing yet another person he loves to circumstances beyond his control.

In that first year after the incident, they had been inseparable. Nancy would stop by the Byers’ house on Saturday mornings just to check in, to see if Joyce needed help grocery shopping or if she could pick up anything for her at the hardware store. Joyce would often decline her offers until Jonathan began to accept them on his mother’s behalf. After a while, he would already be out the door to greet her before she even made it up the rest of the Byers’ driveway.

Sometimes they’d walk, but most of the time Jonathan would drive them around for hours after they had finished their errands, just to talk. Jonathan told Nancy that in the first few weeks after Will was home from the hospital he would sit awake all night at Will’s bedside, convinced that if he didn’t keep a constant vigil over him that _thing_ would return and drag Will back into the Upside Down. He told her that he didn’t think he’d ever get out of Hawkins because how could he leave his mother after everything that happened. Nancy told him that she blamed herself for Barb’s death and she would probably carry that guilt around for the rest of her life. She told him about the acute sadness she felt as she watched her baby brother retreat into himself, unable to move on.

Jonathan told her about his nightmares. She told him she had them too.

She wasn’t entirely sure when their weekend car rides began to change or when they had allowed themselves to stop grieving, but eventually Joyce didn’t need them to make trips into town for her anymore now that Chief Hopper had been “stopping by for dinner” on a more frequent basis, so Nancy and Jonathan found themselves just doing things that friends do. They’d drive out to farm country so Jonathan could take photos and Nancy would feed the horses, or out to the quarry to swim, or to Rosebud Diner to share an order of fries and a couple of Cherry Cokes.

Sometimes Steve would join them, and for Nancy those were the best days.

Their closeness had also earned them some unwanted attention, because in Hawkins nothing was sacred. Nancy Wheeler was _still_ a slut- she was openly having an affair with Jonathan Byers and didn’t even have the decency to be ashamed and Steve was an even bigger asshole for letting it go on!

Neither of them ever discussed the rumors, though Nancy had known for a long time how Jonathan felt about her. The entire _town_ knew, for Christ’s sake, but he’d never once imposed that on her. She pressed him about it once, not about her specifically, but if he had considered finding a girl now that their monster hunting days were behind them. He had shrugged and said that getting out of Hawkins was his top priority, and he probably wouldn’t make the best boyfriend right now, anyway.

Nancy knew that was only partially a lie, which is why she had rationalized that this was the reason she wouldn’t tell him about the ring, to spare his feelings. It was for Jonathan’s benefit, and not for her own selfish reasons.

It wasn’t because somewhere along the way things got muddled, and she’d seek him out in the halls at school, before she even looked for Steve. It wasn’t because she constantly had to remind herself that flirting with him was _unacceptable_. It wasn’t because he still apologized for the photos he’d taken of her whenever she accompanied him to the dark room. It wasn’t because she’d reach out and grab his hand for no particular reason just to let her fingers trace the raised, angry scar along his left palm and ask him if it still hurt even though it had long since healed. It wasn’t because he’d run his thumb along her knuckles as she did this and quietly ask her the same. It wasn’t because she had asked herself on more than one occasion if it were possible to be in love with more than one person.

“Mike,” She hears her mother’s muffled shout down into the basement. “Jonathan is here, time for Will to go home!”

She lowers the volume on her radio and cranes her neck, hoping to catch the exchange between Jonathan and her mother in the foyer. She can’t really make out much, so she creeps closer and presses her ear to the door, praying the floorboards beneath the carpeting don’t give her away.

“I’m actually collecting more than one tonight, Mrs. Wheeler.” He says, and she can visualize him so clearly; the corners of his mouth quirking up in a tight almost smile and a hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck, both things he does when he’s nervous. Nervous because neither of them were ever sure just how much her parents actually knew about anything that had gone on in the time Will had been trapped in the Upside Down or how much they could reveal to them.

“Dustin’s mom asked if I could drop him off while I’m at it.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Jonathan- _Boys!_ While we’re young, please!”

She hears a chorus of unintelligible protests followed by more yelling from her mother, then the pounding of four pairs of feet on the basement stairs until she can distinguish the boys’ frenzied and congruent retelling of their latest D&D campaign.

The latch on her bedroom door unexpectedly gives and she stumbles forward into the hallway at the top of the stairs and she’s caught like a deer in the headlights when she comes into everyone’s line of sight.

_Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit._

“Hi, Nancy.” Jonathan offers quietly, that almost smile tugging at his mouth, just like she knew it would be, but his gaze is steady.

“Hi.” It occurs to her that she hasn’t seen him in three days and God she’s _missed_ him.

_This love is strong, why do I feel weak?_

“Hey, Nancy! Mike says you’ve been acting all weird ever since Steve gave you that promise ring but you seem okay to me.” Dustin hollers up at her sending her a wide toothless smile. She can't bring herself to be upset with him because really, it's not his fault. He's not aware of the damage he's just caused. She screws he eyes shut at the sudden onslaught of guilt that threatens to overwhelm her. The ring on her finger suddenly feels like it weighs about four thousand pounds.

She chances a look at Jonathan who’s still watching her from the bottom of the stairs. She sees his face harden minutely, but then he’s smiling at her genuinely and openly, and in that moment she knows that she’s lost him for good and things will never go back to the way they were. It wasn’t that she chose her commitment to Steve over their friendship, which if she were really being honest with herself, hadn’t been the real reason she’d actually kept Jonathan at arm’s length. It was that she had lied. For months. She had betrayed his already precarious trust in others and she hates herself for it.

“I hadn’t heard. That’s great, Nancy. I’m really happy for you both.”


End file.
